


Brioche

by mizael



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Food, M/M, alternate universe - culinary school, ygoshipolympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 15:08:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4526775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizael/pseuds/mizael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He appears again in the form of a transfer student from Italy at the beginning of the new semester to Neo Academia, the culinary academy. Red trimmed sleeves and red hot passion and bright sunny orange on top of melting brown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brioche

**Author's Note:**

> LAST MINUTE SUBMISSION FOR YGOSO i regret so much  
> prompt: duel / challenge: no cards
> 
> all gifs done by [pumpkin](http://pumpkinpawn.tumblr.com/)!

**►** **| PLAY**

Defeat. Utter defeat.

You fall at his feet like falling from a skyscraper: you were never a match. Never a match for a man with the world in his hands and the future at his fingertips. The charismatic smile and natural draw he has is something you’ll never be able to replicate. Nor match.

You are outclassed—now, into forever.

* * *

 **❚❚** **| PAUSE**

Your name is Yuusei Fudou, and you have lost.

* * *

 **◄◄** **| REWIND**

He comes swooping in, sudden like a hawk, a bird of prey to feast upon your innards and he’s smiling while he does it, back against a chair and grin wide on his lips. That summer, in the sweltering heat of the sun, you see a star descend and grace your diner—a small thing, one of the many shops that line the district, and that food he eats—

“It’s really good,” he’d said, half-leaning across the counter, dressed in a long sleeved red blazer despite the heat. “I really like your use of scraps! Didn’t think that they’d be so refreshing. Keep on doing what you do!”

And like a hawk, he had left in a flurry of wings, so many feathers blinding your vision so that when you finished swatting them away, he was gone.

A tiny summer flare starts somewhere in the deep reaches of your heart: chocolate brown and sun-kissed orange, red like hot, fury passion. His smile is still engraved in the back of your head, laughter like a thousand bells, and you didn’t even get his name.

 _What a strange, strange man_  you’d think later, years and years later, when all you remember are sweet brown and startling red, a blazer in the middle of summer. His smile is still somewhere in your head but it’s faded as everything else is with time. What did he look like? You wish you remembered.

It’s a tiny, small summer romance—one that you can’t even call a romance.

With a spread of his wings, he left you mystified beyond belief (breathless, breathing), and with those same wings, he had flown away, out of your reach.

* * *

 **❚❚** **| PAUSE**

Five years is a long time. In the short while that humans have—eighty is the life expectancy, so five years would equate to almost six percent of an entire life—things change too quickly. Sceneries, morals, opinions, people. Memories, too. They all change and warp with time.

You aren’t sure if that’s a good or bad thing. That stranger from your memories has not disappeared at all, but you’re not entirely sure that your memories are correct anymore, or if it’s just your brain warping him to some idealized version you have of him in your head. Was he really sun-kissed orange and chocolate brown, the smile that shone like a thousand stars?

And—you remember, now, however barely—he had cooked something for you, too. He had taken the fish carcass you gave him and made soup, and the taste of that?

The taste of that soup is something you’ll never forget: creamy, rich, the umami components of the fish head making for a great stock seasoned with white pepper, ground thyme leaves, garlic powder, and leftover rice from the previous day. Scrap cooking—that’s your specialty, but he had taken it to the next level.

“Your scrap cooking’s pretty nice, but if you have access to fresh things, incorporate them, too!” he’d said when you took the first bite of the rice steeped in fish head soup and looked at him in awe. And then he’d pointed two fingers at you and winked. “Gotcha!”

(You wish you could still see his face as clearly as you tasted that soup.)

* * *

**►►** **| FAST FORWARD**

He—you  _think_ (faded as he is from memory, that eye-catching grin is something you can start to place, but)—appears again in the form of a transfer student from Italy at the beginning of the new semester to Neo Academia (your culinary school). Red trimmed sleeves and red hot passion and bright sunny orange on top of melting brown. That stranger.

( _But._ )

But he waltzes into your dorm (Shooting Star it’s called, because the owners surely had some odd naming senses), a truckload of cutting-edge machines behind him. Blast freezers, anti-griddles, installation for a liquid nitrogen pump and too many other things that defy everything it is that you hold near and dear to your style of cooking.

“Heya!” he has the gall to mock salute with two fingers and give you a wink. “I’m Yuuki Juudai, a transfer student coming in from Italy! I’m here to request space for some of my machines.”

“The dorm kitchen is everyone’s kitchen,” you say, arms crossed and a frown beginning to tug at your lips, but you hold it. Everyone has their reasons, and you understand that this is his style of cooking,  _but_. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have room.”

“Ah? But I just got a look at it yesterday,” Juudai keeps smiling that infuriating— _infuriating_? When did it change from  _eye-catching_?—grin and gestures to the truckload behind him. “These are small machines that I can tuck in the corner, no problem! I’ll even clean them myself. And the liquid nitrogen pump will be placed just outside. I’m a believer in cutting-edge technique, you know!”

“The Shooting Star dorm does well enough without the help of so many machines,” you reply, and that frown on your face digs deeper. “We believe in traditional cooking techniques.”

As scattered as you all are, the deep belief that your own hands could make what machines can is something that everyone shares. Crow’s specialty is smoked foods, but he does it all by hand. And Jack—you aren’t too sure about Jack—may be the opposite of your scrap cooking, but at least he toils to the best of his ability without relying on anything else. Aki is the plant witch, and Kiryu—before he left (screaming, in tears)—was the one who taught you how to use scraps, how to make the most of everything.

But Juudai laughs. “What’s your name?”

“Fudou Yuusei,” you say but shake your head again. “We really can’t allow you to take an entire section of the kitchen to yourself.”

That grin grows—infuriating,  _infuriating—_ and Juudai leans forward, hands on his hips. “So let’s duel for it! A bonafide Shokugeki, a food match,” it’s like he planned this all along. “My machines versus your traditional cooking. If you win, I’ll relocate to another dorm. If I win, though, I get to put my machines in the kitchen.”

“This isn’t something we can just duel on—”

“And why not?” you feel a hand on your shoulder and immediately look up to see Martha’s smile--warm, caring, it relaxes all the bones in your body. Martha is the dorm head for the Shooting Star, the mother figure for everyone who has never had one. “Everything in this academy can be fought for.”

But this is your dorm—this is  _their_  dorm. “Martha…”

She looks at him like she’s known him before, eyes soft and welcoming. “Juudai,” she walks forward and takes a stance like she’s about to scold him, but ends up laughing instead. “You shouldn’t antagonize your roommates. You know you can’t switch dorms.”

Juudai laughs, again, clearer—the sound of a thousand bells, and you remember—you  _remember—_ the man that stopped by your diner with his red blazer in the middle of summer and you are sure, absolutely sure, that Juudai was that exact same man five years ago.

(Five years is a long time.)

“But my cooking requires these machines, Martha!” he doesn’t seem the least bit fazed. If anything, Juudai just relaxes easier and easier with each second. “You know, right?”

“I know,” the fondness in her voice—Martha knows Juudai? “Which is why I’m allowing this duel.”

“Martha, our kitchen—” you try to protest but she has that fire in her eye, the same one you see in Juudai’s. She will not back down and you—you find yourself wanting to go through with this, to prove that traditional is better than cutting-edge.

To show him that you’ve grown from the five years when he made you that rice steeped in fish head soup, when he outclassed you in your own style of cooking.

“Well, Yuusei?” Martha asks, and she smiles that smile, that slight upward tilt of her lip that you know is reserved for when she knows she’s right. You relax in return, and smile back, however small.

“Alright.”

* * *

 **►** **| PLAY**

You’ve seen defeat before in the visage of other people: hunched over and shaking; disbelief wide in their eyes; insults in their mouth; the denial coursing through blood and rocking, rocking,  _rocking_  their entire belief system. And then there is the defeat that lights fires in their cores; burden with renewed determination; acceptance and acknowledgement in the face of submission.

There is room for dignity in defeat, but you—you, who always championed others to accept it honorably, who always believed that defeat is just another step on the ladder, you—are in disbelief yourself.

Your name is Yuusei Fudou, and you have lost against Juudai Yuuki and his cutting-edge style of techniques.

“The winner of the cooking duel has requested a portion of the Shooting Star dorm’s kitchen to be used for his machines. It is granted, as per rules of this Shokugeki,” the announcer says but you barely hear it.

“Nice dish!” Juudai says when he shakes your hand—it’s all robotic to you, the motions. You go through them like a routine. "But I'll be taking that part of the kitchen now!"

You can't remember what you said to him (if anything at all), so lost were you in your disbelief. But it might have been something like "Thanks, you as well," before you parted ways and listened to the installation of the machines from your dorm room.

Martha had smiled that smile of hers and left you to stew.

In-between the sounds of heavy construction and Juudai’s shouts outside, you drift.

* * *

 **◄◄** **| REWIND**

“The theme of this cooking duel is ‘scraps’! You have been allowed to bring outside, prepared ingredients. The main takeaway from your dish must be something that is usually thrown away or something that’s been leftover for more than two days. One hour on the clock—begin!”

* * *

 **❚❚** **| PAUSE**

“Yuusei?”

Crow shows up at your door with two jars of smoked sausages tucked between his arms—no doubt something he had just made the moment before—a bottle of rice wine in his hands, and a sympathetic look on his face, creasing all the yellow markers he has on his skin (tattoos, he says).

You don’t drink, and neither does Crow.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he hooks a foot around the leg of a small table nearby and slides it over until it’s right in front of you. The rice wine follows after, along with two sake cups. “Take a shot, you’ll feel better.”

“I hardly use alcohol in the pits of despair, Crow,” your voice is dry, far from the humor you’re used to hearing, but Crow laughs anyway. “Not that I’m there in the first place.”

“No, but you’re pretty close,” he sits down on the floor and folds his legs, slamming a hard, calloused hand onto the small table. “The rice wine is warm.”

You can’t help the chuckle that falls out of your mouth as you slide off the bed to join Crow sitting on the floor, across from him on the tiny table. “At least.”

Crow smiles, opens one of the jars he brought with him and offers the open lid to you. “I just took them out of the smoker this morning. Try some. It goes great with the rice wine.”

“Thanks,” and you don’t know what else to say, knowing that Crow has stopped by because of the news of the match that passed only hours ago. There’s a gnawing feeling in your gut, clenching, clenching, trying to force an apology out of your lips for losing but you are  _scared_. “I—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Crow just leans across the table and pats your shoulder, palm warm. “Don’t.”

You’d like to, but you can’t.

At least, until you drink that cup of rice wine Crow pushes into your hands, and your worries are soon forgotten with each sip—Crow laughs and hauls you into bed, tells you something like ‘ _drink some water in the morning_ ’ and you fall asleep to the rumbling sounds of heavy machinery outside.

Ironic, you’d think in the morning.

(The alcohol hasn’t washed away the taste of that soup.)

* * *

► **| PLAY**

“Good morning!” Juudai has the gall to greet you with a grin and a smile, the gall to wear a frilly apron with a ladle in hand, like you’re some disgruntled husband that’s come back to his loving housewife.

Where’s his chef’s outfit?

“Morning,” you say anyway, because there has never been a bad bone in your body, and you can’t resent Juudai for winning. He had bested you, fair and square.

Aki is at the other side of the kitchen, separating the fresh vegetables she probably harvested earlier this morning. She gives you a smile and a wave, and mouths an ‘it’s okay’ like you are fragile glass.

You might be. The defeat is numb, background to the blame you feel on your shoulders. This is everyone’s kitchen, but you had lost it to the machines.

“Wow, those vegetables look really nice and fresh!” Juudai had walked over when you weren’t paying attention, and Aki just steps back a bit to let him examine her harvest. “Are these free reign or do I have to grow some myself, too?”

“They’re for everyone,” she says, smile soft. “You’re allowed to take extra ingredients to classes if they aren’t anything extremely unfair, like truffles.”

“Hmmm,” Juudai glances to the clock and then the deep fryer-in the back, and grins. “Let’s have a tempura breakfast! Could I use some of your cucumbers and sweet potatoes?”

“Sure,” and she selects a few out of the bunch to hand to Juudai, who thanks her and brings them back to his cutting board to start chopping. Aki refits her straw hat and takes her empty wicker basket to head back outside to tend to the rest of the garden.

“Good morning, Aki,” you say as she passes.

“Good morning, Yuusei,” and her smile is beautiful, too different from the cold glares she had when she first joined the dorm—a fiery winter blizzard, a rose with too many thorns. “I don’t mind the machines at all.”

And before you can try to hand out an apology, she leaves.

Aki knows you better than you do, probably.

“Hey, Yuusei,” and it’s unfortunate but Juudai is still there, hands now caked in powder as he rolls the pieces of sliced cucumbers and sweet potatoes in flour. “Wanna be my taste tester? I’ll deep fry these and you can tell me how it tastes!”

And despite everything, you nod and say, “Sure.”

Different doesn’t necessarily mean bad, you learn. Juudai is still twinkling stars and high dreams, spewing light and fiery hot passion when he talks about where he’s from. Japan, he says, he was born here, but his parents moved to Italy when he was eleven.

“I learned everything I know there!” he continues, throwing flour-caked vegetables and meat into a boiling pot of oil to deep fry. Not even a minute pases before he grabs a ladle and fishes them out, laying them on a bunch of paper towels to dry. “Coming back to Japan is an experience.”

“Is it?” you’re only half-interested, immediately wrapping the deep fried vegetables in the paper towels and soaking the excess oil out of them.

He says something else about Japan, about Italy, something about the difference in food and cuisine, about possible fusions or re-imaginings. You aren’t quite sure, too lost in your own thoughts about this new addition to the dorm.

This hawk that landed and claimed its perch.

“Thanks a lot!” his hands are still caked in flour but you’ve done most of the plating, and Juudai washes his hands in the sink afterward. “Try one of them.”

“I’d rather wait for everyone else before starting breakfast,” you say, but Juudai’s already got chopsticks in his fingers and a plate of tempura in his hands.

“Aaaah—” he says, holding a piece of fried shrimp for you to taste, and you have half a mind to repeat your desire to wait.

But the scent of it hits you like a truck: sweet, musky oil and the sound of crunching beneath chopsticks. Fried to perfection--and you find yourself wanting to have at least one bite. Just one wouldn’t hurt.

So you open your mouth and bite down on the shrimp that’s being offered, and—

“Perfect, right?” Juudai grins and retracts his arms until he’s got the half-eaten piece of shrimp in front of his own mouth. He eats what you haven’t. “Crispy and crunchy and cooked just right.”

Five years is a long time, you realize. A long, long time.

Juudai’s cooking has grown to a place you can’t reach. He’s been able to fly to heights you haven’t imagined. There is no doubt now, that he won that duel just yesterday, that he made that fish head soup years ago, that he continues to—in his odd way, his brazen way—surprise you utterly and completely with his cooking.

Chocolate brown and sun-kissed orange.

You never idealized him in your memories, he just always was.

“Yes,” you say, despite everything, a smile growing on the edge of your lips. Perhaps Juudai blinks, you aren’t sure, or perhaps that intake of breath was someone else coming into the kitchen to smell breakfast, but—”Yes, it’s perfect.”

And Juudai’s smile—less teasing, less smug—takes the breath from your lungs.

“Thanks, Yuusei.”

(Crispy and crunchy, the juice spills into your mouth from the shrimp alone. Bread and soup? A timeless combination, one that is twisted in pieces of deep fried flour. The soup is inside the bread, and it all melts spectacularly in your mouth.

Fish head soup is but a dream, now, a far-off memory you’ll forget like the rest.)

* * *

 **►** **| PLAY**

The school year passes without fuss, even with the addition of Juudai-from-Italy. It’s quiet, serene, a bit loud at times, but you are content. Has is been good? Bad? You don’t know—Juudai has always been a ride.

Juudai’s arrival (bad, but good?); his loss (bad); breakfast (good); Juudai winning countless unofficial cooking duels throughout the year every time you challenged him (bad, bad); the encounters late at night where you tried to practice but you’d find him right there with you, pouring chocolate over the anti-griddle and making ice cream at three in the morning (that, you’re not quite sure of yet).

And a barrage of other things that you can’t sort without an internal monologue on why they’re good and bad, but they’re  _there_ , at least.

“I’m twenty-one, you know,” Juudai said one day while lazing about outside, hands tucked under his head on the grass. “I’ve got so much to do after this. I’ll aim for the Pluspol Award.”

“Pluspol?” you’d raised an eyebrow. “That’s a French award. No Japanese person has ever won it.”

“Well I’ll be the first,” he’d laughed and sat up, eyes still toward the sky. “The first Japanese person to win the Pluspol Award.”

Eyes that shone like gems, he’d reached out to sky and declared his intent to conquer it. You didn’t know what to feel then, even less so now when you think back on it, but perhaps that was a sign.

“And Yuusei?” he’d turned his head to look down at you with those shining amber eyes—a trick of the light? For a moment, they looked gold—”I’m counting on you to cheer me on!”

“Sure,” and you didn’t think besides the thoughts of how beautiful he looked then, shining with dreams that no one else could reach for and grab besides him.

“A promise, then,” he held his pinky out. “Fly with me to France!”

* * *

 **❚❚** **| PAUSE**

You don’t fly with him to France.

* * *

 

 **►** **| PLAY**

“A ramen burger,” are the first words out of your lips as soon as he appears on the other side of the Skype call, seven at night in Paris, and you, twelve in the morning in Tokyo.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You pull out your fancy mezzaluna knife to chop some arugula for a  _ramen burger_ ,” you repeat. “At a competition for the  _Pluspol Award._  Juudai.”

Juudai laughs. “Well, it did the trick, right?”

“You pulled out soggy two-day old ramen noodles and deep fried them into a  _ramen burger_.”

“Geez, okay, I get it. It’s not like I wasn’t there to witness the whole thing,” Juudai makes a face, but it morphs into a grin anyway. “I drew inspiration from your scrap idea, y’know.”

You aren’t sure whether to be flattered, placated, surprised, or exasperated. In the end, you settle for some messy combination of the four, forming a weak smile on your lips. It’s late, but at least Juudai had done it.

“When you get back to Japan—”

“Ah, here’s the good and bad news,” Juudai holds his hands up on the other side of the camera and at least has the decency to look a bit sheepish. “I got a lot of offers for sponsorships from some big business guys after I won. I think I might open a Japanese restaurant here in Paris. And, um…”

“... You won’t be coming back to Japan?”

“At least, not for a while!” Juudai says. “Maybe a year or two until I get this restaurant kicked up and running and I can afford some days off.”

You, in a part of your heart, are extremely proud that he’s done all he’s set out to achieve, but some deeper part of you, some selfisher side, wishes he’d come back to start a restaurant  _here_ , in Japan, his birthplace.

But Juudai is not someone that can ever be tethered down.

You manage a smile. “I’m holding you to two years.”

“Geez, can’t I get a little leeway? What are you, my jealous boyfriend?”

“Yes, I am.”

* * *

 **►►** **| FAST FORWARD**

When he gets back, hair grown longer, face more angled in jaws and lines you don’t remember before (even if you’ve seen him in Skype calls throughout the years, but the camera quality is horrible),  you kiss him for being so recklessly ambitious, for being such a brazen  _fool_.

“Airplane food sucks,” is the first thing he says when you two break away, and you snort in response.

“We’ll get you something better, if you aren’t too tired,” you say in response. “Home for now.”

“What are we having?” you two stop by the carousel on the way out and grab the rest of Juudai’s luggage—nothing more than a red suitcase and a red duffel. He’s adopted a fat orange tabby, too, carried in a small fabric cage under his arm.

It meows at you.

“Fish head soup.”

 

 **▇** **| STOP**

**Author's Note:**

> psst there's an [omake](http://thayora.dreamwidth.org/1911.html#cutid1) by [thayora](http://thayora.tumblr.com/)


End file.
